Guy Garvey on Sunday’s 6 Music Bowie exclusive - David Bowie Latest News Guy Garvey on Sunday’s 6 Music Bowie exclusive “Garvey is a singer with a band” For those that hadn’t made the connection, BBC Radio 6 Music presenter, Guy Garvey, has a little side project; a band for whom he is the quite brilliant frontman, Elbow. And though we wish him the very best of luck with that venture, it’s his DJ hat that we concern ourselves with today. As you well know, Guy has the exclusive scoop on the full length version of Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime) between 14:00 and 16:00 on Sunday afternoon in the UK, on his BBC Radio 6 Music show; Guy Garvey’s Finest Hour . And Guy himself seems rather pleased about that, as you can probably tell: “I'm absolutely over the moon to have the exclusive on a David Bowie tune. 6 Music is about bringing focus to new music and archiving its earliest performances for the future as well as celebrating existing great music through the recordings left to us all by keepers of the flame past.

Given Bowie’s influence on all branches of contemporary music, this is a beautiful acknowledgement from one of rock’s greatest innovators of all the station stands for. I regularly lose a button over how proud I am to be part of 6 Music. I've just lost three.” Guy Garvey — Free listening, videos, concerts, stats and photos at Last.fm uk Guy Edward John Patrick Garvey (born 6 March 1974, in Bury, Greater Manchester, England), is the singer/guitarist to Manchester based, Mercury Music Prize winning band Elbow , as well as a presenter (Sunday evenings 10-12 GMT) for BBC 6 Music and A&R manager of Skinny Dog Records. He previously presented a show on Sunday evenings on XFM. His versatile vocal range characterized by a deeply accented and thick tenor has often been compared to Peter Gabriel . Elbow’s Guy Garvey On Shaking Up the Long-Running Band - Speakeasy - WSJ Elbow’s Guy Garvey On Shaking Up the Long-Running Band By Biography Michael S.

Derby May 14, 2014 6:00 pm ET A band in its third decade, with all original members intact, often finds that shaking things up can be as necessary as it is invigorating For Guy Garvey, singer of English band Elbow, seeking a new path forward meant that the life-long Manchester resident would come to New York. He would fade into a world where he wasn’t a celebrity, mull the implications of turning 40, and nurse the wounds that came from the end of a 10-year relationship. Mr. Garvey’s journey provided key inspiration for “The Take Off And Landing Of Everything,” released in March. The band is set to play a sold-out show at New York’s Webster Hall Friday, on a tour of America and Canada concluding on May 28th in Los Angeles at The Wiltern.

Guy Garvey, Musical artist • Biography & Facts Guy Garvey Musical artist Guy Edward John Garvey (born 6 March 1974, in Bury, Lancashire, England) is the singer and guitarist in the band Elbow as well as a presenter (Sunday afternoon 2 pm to 4 pm, British time) for BBC 6 Music and A&R manager of Skinny Dog Records. He previously presented a show on Sunday evenings on XFM. Garvey had a monthly column in the now-defunct listings magazine City Life and is a patron of MAG (the Mines Advisory Group), the Manchester-based charity responsible for clearing war zones of mines and munitions world wide. Amongst other work Garvey produced and recorded the I Am Kloot album Natural History (2001). Alongside Elbow keyboard player Craig Potter he also produced I Am Kloot's single "Maybe I Should" (2005, not associated with any album), their Mercury Music Prize nominated 2010 album Sky at Night and their 2013 album Let It All In.

He appears on Massive Attack's 2010 album record Heligoland.As well as vocal duties Garvey has also played a wide variety of instruments live including guitar and various forms of percussion.He is a member of the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (BASCA),In April 2012 Garvey became a patron of the Manchester Craft and Design Centre. He received an honorary doctorate from Manchester Metropolitan University in July 2012, in recognition of his contribution to music and is now a Doctor of Arts. Garvey has also appeared on the CBBC series 12 Again. Guy Garvey: The Elbow singer on his solo takeoff By using this website, you consent to our use of cookies. For more information on cookies see our Cookie Policy .

X Guy Garvey: The Elbow singer on his solo takeoff A new band, new relationship, and a struggle with strange lyrics – Guy Garvey’s mid-life crisis seem like an awful lot of fun Sat, Oct 31, 2015, 09:00 Guy Garvey: “Most people don’t realise till they’re nearing 40 that you’re allowed to feel more than one thing at one time”. Every day’s an education with Guy Garvey . You ring the Elbow frontman up for a chat, and before you know it you’re deep into a conversation about transatlantic telephone cables, Alec Guinness’s spectacles in Smiley’s People, and the unbridled joy of eight-hour train journeys. “I love ’em,” he says of the latter in that deep, distinctive Mancunian brogue. “I get loads of writing done and I feel . . . I don’t know.

Even if it’s a noisy, not very well looked-after, dingy little Arriva TransPennine one with no plug sockets, I still feel like I’m in the lap of luxury whizzing through the countryside.” It’s easy to get sidetracked with Garvey, but it’s appropriate in this case – particularly since the purpose of our conversation is to talk about his own career diversion with the release of his debut solo album, Courting the Squall. The main question is: why now? “A journalist I spoke to this morning suggested that it might have been a midlife crisis, and actually, that kind of rang a bell,” he says, chuckling. “I think approaching 40, I was single, having split up with my long-term partner a couple of years ago. I suddenly thought, ‘I’m happiest when I’m writing; I should be doing more of that.’ So really, it’s about upping the output, more than anything. Elbow’s always gonna be my focus, and it has, to this point, been my life’s work.

But this was fast and spontaneous and fun; it’s the most fun record I’ve ever been involved with, in any capacity.” It was tempting to call up his best mates to play on the album, but he was talked out of doing so by Elbow bassist Pete Turner . “He said, ‘I think you should do your own thing – then you’ll feel like it’s your own thing.’ ” ADVERTISEMENT The musicians he enlisted weren’t strangers, however. They include bassist Pete Jobson of I Am Kloot (a band that Garvey has co-produced several albums for), “because we’ve poured each other into taxis for so many years”, Nathan Sudders of Manchester band The Whip, Ben Christophers and drummer Alex Reeves , as well as the string section that Elbow play with. Drink session “We were supposed to be doing it in three sessions at Peter Gabriel’s studio [Real World], but we had to do it in two, because we drank the budget for the third,” he laughs. “We had to come to Salford to finish it.

But I’m working with pals, and it’s just been a riot.” While sessions for Elbow’s best-known album, The Seldom Seen Kid, were long and fraught, this one took a comparatively brief nine weeks. “To be honest with you, what’s on the album are the first 10 songs I wrote. It’s not crafted. When I remember the hours and hours that went into The Seldom Seen Kid, it feels more like an architect looking at a building than someone listening to a record. I picture the skylines of Manchester changing throughout writing that record; I picture the stress we were all feeling that we managed to keep off the record; and then the life-changing events in terms of my friend [ Bryan Glancy , whom the band dedicated that album to] dying, and falling in love with [former partner] Emma for the first time. All that stuff is on that record, and it says 10 years of my life, to me. This album feels like it’s got energy.” The fact that Elbow altered their creative process for their last album, 2014’s The Take Off and Landing of Everything, working and writing separately, before reassembling it together, also had an impact.

“The decision to work more separately from Elbow wasn’t born from anything being wrong, as much as it was preparing to be together for another 20 years,” he says. “It was to make sure that it doesn’t go wrong. I know bands that don’t travel together – not because they’ve fallen out, but in the interests of longevity, they arrive separately at every gig so that they’re not spending hours and hours in each others’ company. I think that’s really smart. And yeah, the confidence for sure was gained by working a little bit separately, but I also realised that I can write two records at once. Happy and sad “The consideration was always that Elbow was the focus and nothing else could get in the way, and I had to remain singular. It still is the most important thing by far, but I’ve realised that I can do two things at once – in the same way that most people don’t realise till they’re nearing 40 that you’re allowed to feel more than one thing at one time. You can be happy and sad at the same time; in fact, it’s normal to have more than one feeling going on at the same time.

So I can write earnestly and from the heart and really go digging for things in the way that I always have with Elbow – and at the same time, I can write frivolous sort of comic lyrics, as I do on [album track] Angela’s Eyes.” Courting the Squall certainly covers all the bases on that count. There are songs like Belly of the Whale, written in the wake of his split with long-term partner, writer Emma-Jane Unsworth. “It’s about the house I live in, just after my break-up. Suddenly, this place was way too big, and it felt awful, y’know? It was cavernous for a little while. But you fill the place with new memories, and I’ve fallen back in love with it. But at the time, there was this terrible sort of feeling of loneliness and shame – not because I’d done anything wrong, but because things hadn’t worked out the way I thought they would.” ADVERTISEMENT As a counterpoint to the melancholia, there are songs about his newfound love with actress Rachael Stirling – in particular, Electricity, which was written and is co-performed with musician Jolie Holland of The Be Good Tanyas.

This is where those Trans-Atlantic phone cables come in. “And now I can talk to New York for free, on Skype,” he marvels. “I just think it’s wonderful: leaps, bounds, and advances. So Electricity was kind of semi-celebrating my passionate love affair with New York, but because it was about a transatlantic love affair, Jolie completely got it because she’s in love with a guy that lives in New York. I remember at one point saying, ‘We’ve described how phone calls work in this day and age; what have we not said? What do you say on the phone to your lover that we haven’t said yet?’ And I remember her looking at me with this coy smile and saying in her southern drawl, ‘Tell me what you’re wearing,’ and I was like ‘Whoooo! You can sing that line,’” he laughs, heartily. Travel has been a feature of Garvey’s life over the last while, but visiting Stirling – who is filming new British comedy film The Finest Hour and a Half on location in Pembrokeshire – via a train journey also proved inspiring when it came to writing for the next Elbow album. “I got something down.

It’s an image I’m wrestling with at the minute, summat to do with ‘the Jurassic coastline of your heart’,” he explains. “I don’t know what I mean by that, but I get a feeling when I think about those words in combination. I’m not quite sure what I’m on about at this moment, but you never know – that might be on the next record, somewhere.” With all this talk of Elbow’s next record, does that mean that there’s no chance of him calling it a day with the band he’s fronted for 25 years – regardless of how well his solo career may go? “I’m most proud of my work with Elbow and always will be,” he says firmly. “But I love this record for what it is, and I want to do more of them. There’s no reason you can’t do both. Why not?” Courting the Squall is on Polydor. Guy Garvey plays the Olympia Theatre, Dublin, on December 7th Rocket man: How does Elbow's lead singer Guy Garvey remain so down to earth? | The Independent Rocket man: How does Elbow's lead singer Guy Garvey remain so down to earth?

Their soaring anthems have propelled them into the indie-rock stratosphere Saturday 4 June 2011 23:00 BST Click to follow Rocket man: How does Elbow's lead singer Guy Garvey remain so down to earth? 1/2 2/2 PA Men with beards, the five members of Elbow shuffle unassumingly on to the stage at London's O2 Arena to the deafening cheers of a crowd that clearly obsesses over their favourite band the way 14-year-old girls do Justin Bieber. It's a winningly incongruous sight: lip-quivering admiration for five blokes who, though they may dress in Liam Gallagher's sharp Pretty Green label, nevertheless look more like his shambolic uncle than they do his peers. But with Elbow, it's all about the music, and the music is wrought and majestic and far too subtle, strictly speaking, for enormodomes such as this. Over the next two hours tonight, on this cold March evening, the mood they elicit from these 10,000 thirtysomethings is one of slack-jawed awe, the goosebumps frequently giving way to actual tears.

It is this collective outpouring of emotion that lends added poignancy to singer Guy Garvey's regular query from the stage: "Is everybody OK?" And if Garvey seems a little unsteady himself from time to time, swaying on his knees and tripping over the occasional lyric, there is good reason. The man is drunk. "Oh, evenings like this are overwhelming, really," he will say afterwards. "If I didn't have a drink or two before the show, and, OK, another couple on stage [at one point between songs he mixes cocktails for the entire band], you'd hear it in my voice – the nerves, the terror." But he is learning, gradually, to overcome this. "We've been doing this for a long time now, 20 years. To have reached a point where we know we are among friends is – well, it's nice, it's really nice." k Two weeks later, and Elbow are appearing on the BBC show Later with Jools Holland to promote their new single "Open Arms". It's the kind of unifying anthem they do so well, and one that will likely prove a highlight when they perform it at Glastonbury at the end of this month. Later...

is filmed live, and the band are due on at 10.20pm, closing the show with a climactic performance featuring Manchester's Hallé Youth Choir on backing vocals. But there comes a problem. The act on before them is a seasoned old cove called McCoy Tyner, who, once his band get into the groove of their interminable jazzy noodle, don't know how to stop, and so they don't. They simply play on, Holland incapable of interrupting their flow. When the floor manager finally steps in to do so for him, the camera pans hurriedly over to Garvey, caught unawares and gaping, convinced that their slot has come and gone. He quickly composes himself, and the band hastily begin. The fact that they are permitted to play their song in full very likely upsets Jeremy Paxman, whose Newsnight is delayed by four minutes as a result. Garvey is laughing afterwards. "We're used to cock-ups," he says. "They always seem to happen to us. In fact, for years we believed we were cursed. Whenever something was about to go right for us, it always seemed to go wrong instead..." The televisual cock-up is repeated just three weeks later.

They are in New York where they have geared a week's worth of promotion around what many believe might just prove their tipping point in the US: an appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman. But the chat-show host's last guest runs over, and suddenly the credits are rolling. The producer breezes in to their dressing-room afterwards. "Sorry guys," he tells them. "Next time, OK?" If the band that first got together in 1991 had got rather used to the black curse, then they have also become acquainted with an abrupt reversal of fortunes of late. Since 2008, things have started to go right for Elbow, and everybody now, it seems, has a soft spot for them. They are the People's Band, its frontman the recipient of the kind of plaudits once reserved for Stephen Fry. He blushes. "Ah, but that won't last. Pretty soon I'm sure it'll be: Guy Garvey? Gobshite." Elbow's evolution has been slow, and somewhat tortured.

Though they formed while still at college, it wasn't until 2001 that they started releasing records, their music slow and melancholic, broody and sinister, and redolent of early Peter Gabriel and Talk Talk. They would never compete against Oasis for the number-one spot. Their first album, Asleep in the Back, was nominated for a Mercury Award. This, and its 2003 follow-up, Cast of Thousands, both shifted 150,000 copies and certified them, if nothing else, as cult stars. The rambunctious Leaders of the Free World (2005) was mooted by many as their major-league breakthrough – it contained songs that sounded like hit singles – but their then-record company imploded, taking them down with it. "It was touch-and-go for us after that," Garvey says. "We were funding the next record ourselves, and we'd almost run out of money. We didn't even know whether it would see the light of day." But this is where their story became, in Garvey's words, "a fairytale".

That record was The Seldom Seen Kid, whose songs quickly made their way out into the world in a manner previous songs hadn't. Soon after its release, GMTV's Lorraine Kelly – not previously considered an astute music tipster – publicly proclaimed a love of the album track "Mirrorball", and by the time "One Day Like This" was released as a single, its euphoric uplift soundtracking endless TV shows to the point where it became, ostensibly, our new national anthem, Elbow were a sensation. When he appeared on the Andrew Marr Show one Sunday morning, Garvey found himself cornered by another of that day's guests, the then-prime minister Gordon Brown, who also revealed an admiration for it. "Though he did call it 'On a Day Like This'," the singer points out. The Seldom Seen Kid went on to sell a million copies, and won that year's Mercury Prize. Two years on, and fifth album Build a Rocket Boys! has cemented their position as one of the most loved bands of their generation. The sense of goodwill now coming their way, Garvey acknowledges, is palpable.

"But I'd hate anyone to think I was pushing this genial, down-to-earth, working-class thing," he says, suddenly k anxious, and scratching at his whiskers, "because I'm not. We appreciate the goodwill; it's not lost on us. We are grateful for it, enormously. And until everybody does decide I'm a gobshite, we plan to enjoy it." Guy Garvey is 37 years old. He looks older; a big, bearded fellow with a careworn, lived-in face given to easy smiles. His demeanour is avuncular and genial, which is very anti-rock star, as is his dress sense. He rarely leaves home without his university-lecturer-like suit jacket, while his shoes, which look like hillwalkers, are unashamedly scuffed. He is an avid bird-watcher, and rolls his own cigarettes, which he smokes while wincing. We meet on a sunny day in Manchester in early May, in the beer garden of one of his favourite local pubs. He is halfway through his second pint when I arrive. Elbow bassist Pete Turner is with him, but soon makes his excuses.

He hugs his bandmate in farewell, and, because they very likely won't see one another until tomorrow, deposits a fond kiss to the top of his head. This is a very Elbow thing to do, a public display of fraternal kinship. It forms the basis of so many of their songs. "My mates have always hugged and kissed each other without any bashful awkwardness about it," Garvey points out. "I didn't realise that saying something like 'Love you, mate' in a song was particularly unusual or revolutionary until people started suggesting it was." When he was 13, Garvey, the son of a trade unionist and one of seven siblings, abruptly decided that schoolwork no longer suited him. And so he effectively downed tools. "At the time, I used my parents' divorce as an excuse," he says, "but I'm not sure how true that is. They were amazing parents; still are. But whatever the real reason, schoolwork stopped appealing to me." Far from the stereotypical bad lad, however, he didn't play truant.

"No, I still went to all my lessons, and I contributed in class, but I never did homework, never handed anything in." At 16, he was ready to quit education altogether, but his older sister thought otherwise, and enrolled him into the local college where he quickly gained a reputation as something of a show-off. He rarely passed up an opportunity to get up on stage and sing. Fellow students Mark Potter, Pete Turner and Richard Jupp asked him to join their fledgeling band, Mr Soft. Soon after Potter's brother Craig arrived on keyboards, they had rechristened themselves Elbow after a line in Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective, in which "elbow" was pronounced one of the English language's most sensuous words. They then went about launching their career at a snail's pace, mostly happy to remain a tight, insular unit making the kind of music that pleased, first and foremost, themselves. "Did we ever imagine we'd break through?" Garvey wonders now. "Not really, no. I can still vividly remember supporting U2 at Wembley Stadium a couple of years ago in front of 90,000 people, and feeling convinced that there had been some kind of mistake.

Still do, in fact..." In a music world dominated by at least the illusion of skyscraping confidence, Garvey is notable for wearing his sensitivity on his sleeve, and for articulating it with uncommon grace. He thinks a lot, possibly too much, and as befits someone who appears older than his years, the theme that runs through Build a Rocket Boys! concerns the vagaries of ageing. He's not even 40, yet is already fearing middle age. "As you get older, different insecurities come to the fore," he ruminates. "One fear disappears, and another comes to take its place; you can only have a certain capacity for happiness, sadness, remorse and fear at any one time, and mine change all the time." A current worry is that, professional success aside, he might have become the kind of man his younger self would have sneered at. "My girlfriend [Emma Unsworth, a journalist turned full-time writer, whose debut novel is published this month] and I have just bought a house, with a little patch of land," he says. "We want to start a family.

It's the most important thing in my life right now, and that's a good thing, it definitely is, but at the same time I worry about it. I mean, is this what I've become? A useless suburbanite who talks about his new house, and who fears the younger generation because they go around in hoodies?" Until recently, he had harboured ambitions to up sticks and move to New York, but for various reasons has now decided to stay put. Like a particularly loyal dog, Garvey sees Manchester as his turf. When he strays, he becomes discomfited, lost. "I do like to be around friendly faces, it's true," he says, "and I get no bigger kick than hanging around with the people I've always hung around with. The rest of the band have kids already, and they are excellent, excellent fathers. Watching their kids grow up, and having a stake in their lives through association, is pretty overwhelming stuff. I wouldn't want to be apart from that. And we want to have a family here, now, in Manchester, nowhere else. That's why we've delayed New York. New York can wait.

It'll still be there when we're older." Besides, he has much else on his plate right now. In addition to the band, Garvey has a regular Sunday night slot on BBC 6 Music, and he has also started making documentaries for Radio 4. A recent one was entitled The Honest Musician's Fear of Accidental Plagiarism, prompted after he unwittingly lifted a line from somebody else's song and passed it off as his own (he later apologised to the artist in question, "and I bought him a pint to make up for it"), and another was called The Rainy City, in which he studied the relationship between Manchester's weather and its creative output. "I enjoy doing them, and would like to do more, but I've got to be careful," he says. How so? "Well, I saw that Nick Cave film recently, The Proposition [Cave scripted it]. I got to meet him shortly afterwards, and I told him I'd been anxious before seeing it. He asked me why. Well, I told him, I have a book of Lou Reed's photography, and it's shit. In other words, you've got to be careful not to do things just because you are allowed to.

There's no excuse for making dross. I wouldn't ever want to do that." It is early evening now, and Garvey must leave. He has a dinner party to prepare, something his younger self would no doubt consider a typically useless suburbanite thing to do. It is still warm and sunny in the beer garden, and so as he stands, he slips on a pair of sunglasses. Earlier, he had admitted that he has difficulty wearing sunglasses in Manchester, suggestive, as they can be to others, of someone who has developed ideas above their station. "The last time I put them on here I was with my sister," he'd said. "She stopped in her tracks, laughed, and told me to take them off straight away." Recalling this now, he swiftly removes them before anyone sees him, and replaces them back in his pocket. He goes home squinting into the sun. His sister would be proud. 'Build a Rocket Boys!' is available now on Fiction.

Elbow play Glastonbury on 25 June More about: Guy Garvey review – big-hearted singer luxuriates in extra musical elbow room | Music | The Guardian Guy Garvey review – big-hearted singer luxuriates in extra musical elbow room 4 / 5 stars Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London The lugubrious baritone and jovial banter are as we’ve come to expect, but going solo has allowed Garvey to experiment and have fun Wistful poetry … Guy Garvey at Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London. Photograph: C Brandon/Redferns Guy Garvey review – big-hearted singer luxuriates in extra musical elbow room 4 / 5 stars Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London The lugubrious baritone and jovial banter are as we’ve come to expect, but going solo has allowed Garvey to experiment and have fun Wednesday 2 December 2015 10.29 EST Last modified on Thursday 3 December 2015 10.49 EST Share on Messenger Close Singers in successful bands make solo albums for a host of different reasons.

When Thom Yorke branched off from Radiohead, he used the opportunity to make music even more gnomic and esoteric than his parent band ’s. Guy Garvey is made of different stuff. After 25 years as the singer of Elbow, this gentle bear of a man went top three this autumn with his debut solo album Courting the Squall , a record that is decidedly more mischievous, puckish and experimental than Elbow’s usual output. Garvey rationalised the record as “songs that don’t fit the Elbow template”, but in truth many of them are fairly close to it. Backed by a six-piece band that includes I Am Kloot bassist Pete Jobson on guitar, Garvey croons through an opening number, Three Bells, whose hymnal calm, parps of brass and wistful poetry are quintessential Elbow . It’s firmly in his comfort zone, yet when he veers out of it he does so with invention and elan.

Inspired by Fela Kuti and the Afrobeat that Garvey plays on his 6 Music radio show, Angela’s Eyes is an anarchic aggregation of vivid, skedaddling rockabilly rhythms that takes a laudable lyrical pop at David Cameron: “Eton mess, you’re a lie made flesh”. Pinterest Experimental … Guy Garvey, left, with Pete Jobson on guitar, at Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London. Photograph: C Brandon/Redferns As ever, Garvey intersperses his ruminative, big-hearted music with jovial banter, like an art-rock Peter Kay. These are mid-life songs full of regret and resolve, yet as he unfurls his lugubrious baritone over the skittering, mildly funky Harder Edges, he forgets the lyrics and borrows a phone to look them up on the internet: “Fuck me, I’m getting old!” “We’re going to play an Elbow song, but don’t tell the others,” he cautions as that band’s Mark Potter joins him to strum acoustic guitar through a skeletal yet plangent Great Expectations .

By contrast, the solo track Belly of a Whale is a rambunctious slice of musical slapstick that includes a jazzy, atonal mugging of George Michael’s Careless Whisper. A whimsical, joyfully spirited evening climaxes with Garvey encoring by trilling the Ink Spots’ 1941 doo-wop hit I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire and reprising the ramshackle Angela’s Eyes. It seems that sometimes frontmen make solo albums just so they can let their hair down. Guy Garvey: 'I'd like to be beheaded in Game of Thrones' - Telegraph Glastonbury Guy Garvey: 'I'd like to be beheaded in Game of Thrones' Good, old-fashioned songwriting has helped make Guy Garvey and his band Elbow the stars of Glastonbury. Would he give it all up for a part in the hit fantasy series?

Elbow's lead singer and songwriter Guy Garvey Photo: Rick Pushinsky By Craig McLean 11:00AM BST 22 Jun 2014 Guy Garvey, the singer and lyricist with Elbow, fresh from a sell-out American tour, has travelled from his Manchester home to London for lunch in a Fitzrovia fish restaurant. Tomorrow this much-loved band’s much-loved frontman is due at the BBC to record an appearance on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs. He has the selections sorted. But Garvey is swithering over the object: a Second World War picture of his ­grandfather, or a silver cigarette case that belonged to the late friend who inspired Elbow’s Mercury Prize-winning album The Seldom Seen Kid (2008)? First up, though, is a meeting with a casting agent. After the chart triumphs and the prizes (there was also the 2009 Brit for best British group, plus two Ivor Novellos, one of which was for Elbow’s signature feelgood anthem One Day Like This), does Garvey yearn for the actor’s life?

READ: Why Gerry Goffin was a songwriting genius “I’m toying with the idea,” he nods as he settles down with the menu. Given the preponderance of character actors and northern accents in Game of Thrones (Sean Bean, Mark Addy, the entire House Stark), surely there’s a part for him in HBO’s hit drama? Related Articles The 100 best Glastonbury performances ever 16 Jun 2015 “Well, that’d be great, wouldn’t it?” 40-year-old Garvey ponders with a ruminative rub at his stubble and an admission of a lingering hangover. “But I think my brother would have something to say about that – he’s been a professional actor for many years. He’d probably kick my head in.” Marcus Garvey has appeared in Broadchurch and Last Tango in Halifax, and was what his older sibling describes as “the affable policeman” in Chris Morris’s jihadist satire Four Lions. So, the Garveys as hench-brothers battling Thrones’ soft southern Lannisters? “That’s what I would angle for,” he says, smiling. “Like I say, I’m just toying with it.

I want to know if I’m any good. You’ve got to be careful, haven’t you?” Rhetorical questions are a conversational tic of his, but they are inclusive rather than challenging. “Game of Thrones would be the fun thing to do. Some of my contemporaries have done it already,” he adds, mentioning Gary Lightbody of Snow Patrol, Jónsi from Sigur Rós, “and Will from Coldplay was drumming at the Red Wedding. But my thinking is, ‘I do not want to be a minstrel! Can I be beheaded or something, so I can keep my plaster-cast head?’ ” Equally, the idea of being a voice actor on radio appeals. After all, Garvey’s BBC 6 Music show has made him a popular presence on the station over the past seven years. “And I met Bill Nighy recently,” he continues, “and he’s just fantastic at that stuff. But you do have to be careful. I’ve managed to get away with a career in radio alongside what’s going on with Elbow.” His mindfulness is hard won.

This band formed by friends at Bury College almost a quarter of a century ago endured all sorts of one-step-forward-two-steps-back record label traumas in their first dozen or so years. Commercial and critical success only came with The Seldom Seen Kid, Elbow’s fourth album, and its standout track, One Day Like This. But now they’re up there: a big-selling national-treasure-meets-cult outfit. Imagine Alan Bennett writing for the house band at the Rovers Return (but with festival-sized melodies). It’s why this month Elbow are the highest-placed British band on the main Pyramid Stage on Glastonbury’s opening night, second only to headliners Arcade Fire . So, yes, this taproom philosopher and overgrown choirboy is thrust front and centre into the spotlight. But Garvey promises not to attempt any extra-curricular ventures that might jeopardise the sacred faith in the music shared by himself and his bandmates: brothers Mark (guitar) and Craig Potter (keyboards), Pete Turner (bass) and Richard Jupp (drums).

“No, I wouldn’t do anything that the lads weren’t happy with – if they thought it was daft.” Which means the rest of Elbow must have sanctioned their dulcet-voiced frontman’s appearance on CBeebies reading a bedtime story, Mr Big by Ed Vere. Guy Garvey with his fellow band members in Elbow (Rick Pushinsky) And, equally, they were comfortable with their lyricist sharing his skills with Robert del Naja of Massive Attack. The pair have co-written songs for a stage musical about King Kong. That’s right, a stage musical. About King Kong. “Rob and I both laughed at the idea,” he says of the production that recently premiered in Melbourne and may transfer to Broadway . “I thought it would be fun; something I’ve never tried.” The show’s musical director is producer-composer Marius de Vries (Coldplay, Pet Shop Boys), an old friend and collaborator of Garvey’s. He used one Garvey-del Naja composition, Red Light, “and they were short of another whole song, so the director got in touch.

And I found it very, very simple,” he shrugs of his remit: to write a song, Grasping at Nothing, for the character of Jack. “He’s the romantic lead, but no one remembers him ’cause he gets overshadowed by the monkey.” What, though, of his other literary interests? Has he read George R R Martin’s epic Game of Thrones source novels? No he has not. Garvey says that he is “not a huge reader”. If he does read, it’s short stories. “I’m quite a thorough reader, so I just can’t digest books. And if I find time to read I usually see it as time to write.” It’s an admission that will surprise fans drawn in by his lyrical acuity, an empathetic, uplifting and emotive skill at its finest on Elbow’s current, number-one album, The Take Off and Landing of Everything . Which prompts the question: where does that skill come from? “Listening to other songwriters is part of it,” he replies. Thus we might note his Desert Island Discs: he mentions songs by Talk Talk, Jolie Holland, Joan As Police Woman and Joni Mitchell. “But also, I’m a good learner.

So what I have read I’ve digested very, very thoroughly. I’m the kid that used to take the radio apart – I need to know how things work. I don’t watch films and completely 100 per cent ever suspend my disbelief. I’m thinking, ‘How was it made?’ “I remember dialogue pretty much word-for-word. I’m probably on the spectrum somewhere,” he says brightly. “A lot of musicians are. And because of the way I write – i.e., all the time – I’m pulling out phrases I wrote 10, 15 years ago sometimes. It comes from all over the place.” For years Garvey carried around a journal for jotting all his lyrical ideas. Other favourite writing tools: beer mats, receipts, the shirt pocket into which he shoves scraps of ideas born of an alcohol-fuelled conversation in the pub. But these days he uses an electronic notepad. It’s a necessity born of catastrophe – he once lost a journal during a drunken London trip that ended up “in an illegal Spanish drinking den” – but it also allows Garvey to key in the words in large type, so he can read them on stage if need be.

He doesn’t clarify whether this is to do with failing memory or failing eyesight. And yet: Garvey is a firm believer in the power of the written word. In 2011 he campaigned to save his local library from closure. Does he fear for the printed page? “Yeah,” he nods, “yeah. But having the awful experience of losing that journal, the practicality of having everything backed up every time I walk in my house just outweighs it, really. But no, I do miss the pen and the page. You know,” Garvey says, embarking on one of his anecdotal detours, “I was thinking the other day I’d really like to design some stationery. Is that sad? I really like luggage and stationery.” I’m about to suggest that he writes to Smythson. Surely the high-end stationer would love to be associated with Elbow, just like the BBC (the band wrote the broadcaster’s Olympics theme), and Stockport brewer Robinsons (it did an Elbow beer), and the Hallé symphony orchestra (they performed with the foursome at the Manchester International Festival).

Then I remember that the company’s one-time creative director (and current part-time consultant) is Samantha Cameron, wife of David. And Guy Garvey is very much anti-Conservative. Elbow’s new album is more personal than political, but Garvey flags a key song, The Blanket of Night. “It’s the only firm political statement on the record. There’s a little bit of ridicule of the prime minister elsewhere, but that song is sympathising with refugees, and pointing out how there’s a crisis happening – kindness is missing from every political party as far as refugees are concerned. It’s appalling. It’s really cruel to treat people who are begging for your help like they’re coming for your gold. And the way they’re ghettoised doesn’t help at all.” A scene from the new musical King Kong, which features songs by Garvey (Rex) And what about the North-South divide? Does he think it has widened under the Coalition? “Yeah,” he states flatly. “We always get sacked. But it’s not even the North. It’s those who care the most for other people in society, they’re always the ones that get hit by the Tories, ’cause they want to privatise everything.

“My friend Nicky – five-foot-nothing goth chick – she chose to work with the most difficult kids in Manchester. Her in a unit with 6ft killers, crazy lads. And it got shut down ’cause of the cuts. Then everyone was surprised when the riots kicked off. They’re the most disenfranchised members of society. They’re not afraid of prison ’cause life’s a prison.” Manchester and its people – its community – are shot through Guy Garvey like the writing in a stick of rock. The older he gets, the farther he travels, the more it broadens and thickens within him. “It’s part of my story,” he says simply. “Mancs are generally quite proud of what they’ve got. Manchester’s symbol is the worker bee. That’s the mentality. And it’s the only thing I’ve ever considered having tattooed on my body. “My father was very, very civically proud; my grandfather, too. He used to take me to the [Manchester Central] Library and say, ‘That’s yours; you own every book in it. Don’t let ’em take it off you.’ ” Garvey is the product of a working-class home.

He grew up the second-youngest of seven, his father a newspaper proofreader and union rep at Robert Maxwell’s Mirror Group, his mother a policewoman and later a psychologist. They split when he was 12. Does he have to call himself middle class these days? “Good point. I try and avoid the subject,” he says, chuckling, “but very definitely I am middle class. I’ve paid half my mortgage off. So yeah, I’m chuffed. But no, it doesn’t worry me – I’m not really classist in that way. I know great people of all classes. And equally I know people of all classes who are thoroughly miserable.” Still, in his songs Garvey is no table-thumping polemicist. He applies fun, and invention, to his political thoughts. One of the new album’s finest lyrical images is of a “chinless prefect gone Godzilla”. Garvey admits it was inspired by David Cameron. And he allows that he’s pleased with the image, and also with the internal rhyme structure. “Yeah, I wish I knew its name!” he laughs, then mentions his friend, the poet Simon Armitage. “He’s always telling me what I’ve done technically!

Actually, he’s a great help. I ­often tap him up for ideas. Not actual words – I just say, ‘I’ve been writing about this, and it put this in mind; can you think of anything similar that I can go and look at and research?’ “It’s the same,” he adds, “with my ex.” Garvey’s former partner is Emma Jane Unsworth, a novelist and former journalist. They were together for almost 10 years before splitting while Garvey was writing The Take Off and Landing of Everything . The break-up explains the predominantly personal lyrical arc of the album. This Blue World, the album opener, documents the start, middle and end of the relationship. “And it looks into the future, as well. And I’ve been writing that song for a long time, without knowing what I was writing about. ’Cause the split broadsided both of us – we both realised at the same time that we didn’t want to be together anymore. So it was sad – and also,” he smiles, “the cat tried to jump out of the top window at that moment.

We were both in tears and were both like, ‘Not now!’ ” Their split seems to be entirely functional, or as functional as the end of decade-long relationships can be. They have no children − the rest of Elbow are fathers − but there has been some kind of custody battle. “We have a line in common: ‘The way the day begins decides the shade of everything.’ It starts one of the chapters in her new book [Animals], and I use it in our song New York Morning. Neither of us can remember who wrote it! I think it’s mine; she thinks it’s hers. It’s quite cute, having joint custody of an idea.” The couple are still friends, he insists, and he also insists that he’s happy in his singledom. “Absolutely. I love where I’m at, as I’ve hit 40. Lots of questions, but I’ve addressed ’em all and got a good record out of it! And as a band we very much are family and behave that way. It’s not like I’m a lonely man walking the Earth.

I want to see how much work I can do before I slide off the plate.” Accordingly this cheerfully workaholic and unassuming rock star is up “at the crack of sparrow” each morning, and is at his job all day, every day. “I give myself a hard time,” he says of his approach to his songwriting. “I never feel like I’m doing enough; that’s my only frustration. But yeah, I have very simple pleasures. I love a drink, I love a chat, and I love music.” This, then, is Guy Garvey: a straightforward man with sky-high ambition and soul-deep conviction. Like his father and grandfather – newspaper proofreaders both – he’s a craftsman with words. It’s about shaping and perfecting every sentiment and syllable, the better to communicate with the masses. If you’ve ever heard their song One Day Like This blaring from your radio or (better still) from a stage, you’ll have a sense of the ecstatic communion Elbow’s music can generate. And so to Glastonbury. The band’s most recent appearance at the Somerset festival was in 2011.

Elbow were second to Coldplay on the Pyramid stage, and Garvey had tens of thousands of people engaging in a “reverse Mexican wave”: crouched on their haunches. At the time the singer called it the band’s best-ever show. “It still is,” he says now. Although it was immediately followed by their worst: drinking deep of the Glastonbury spirit, the band caroused through the night, and messed up their next evening’s engagement, in Luxembourg. So what are Elbow planning for this year’s main-stage appearance? Garvey grimaces. “We’ve been trying to think of stunts but we’ve got nowt… So we’ll probably just do the same s--- again!” At least they have One Day Like This in their back pocket. Play that as their customary singalong encore and it’s job resolutely done. “Well, we’ve been pondering not doing that, actually. We were thinking of maybe ending with My Sad Captains [a song from the new album]. What do you think?” Now it’s my turn to grimace.

I tell Garvey that perhaps Glastonbury isn’t the place to be playing fast and loose with a rabid – and possibly discombobulated – audience’s expectations. People love One Day Like This, the “throw those curtains wide” singalong especially. He gives a hearty laugh. “Yeah, you’re right.” It’s a moment of togetherness, that song. It’s very ­ Glastonbury. “Yeah, you’re right,” he says again. “OK, maybe something’s got to happen during it… A special guest… I’ll get my celebrity black book out. Timothy Spall?” he suggests, with a wink. ‘The Take Off and Landing of Everything’ (Fiction) is out now. Elbow play Glastonbury on Friday 27 June, Pyramid Stage, 8pm; glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/

Question: Guy Garvey is a singer with which band?
Answer: ELBOW